Viking is one of a rare breed of people who know stuff, have an opinion and are willing and able to share. Please do not change. This is a Good Thing.

I do understand the impatience with stoopid and unconsidered questions, but maybe coat the response with a bit of sugar, and even make it seem like the culprit/victim has come up with a solution themselves. Not difficult.

It's nobody's job to make the forum an interesting and lively place, but I wouldn't like it if it was avoided because of responses that upset people (QQ), or if it just became a chat room of fellow old farts preaching to the converted._________________DYbeach
ITIL V3 Release, Control & Validation,
ITIL V3 Operation SUpport & Analysis
PMI CAPM (R)

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell

You're right that there's a bit of flaming, but wrong to presume the forum should be interesting or even busy.

Let's face it, ITIL is a very limited subject matter, applicable to a specific area of industry and fundamentally dry as hell. It's a framework aimed at restriction and not expansive creativity (although you can of course be creative in using ITIL ideas).

So this forum is therefore not exciting. People come on and lazily ask questions without putting any effort into a little research. If you can't be arsed to

As DY says, it's no one's responsiblity to make this forum interesting, but at the same time that means that you, as much as anyone else can make it so.

I come on here because it's good to know, every now and again, someone listens to what we're saying.

I've just recently stumbled across this forum by googling about an issue that cropped up as part of my day job, which for the last 12 months has been assisting my organisation implement ITIL processes in order to achieve ISO20000-1 accreditation. And so added it as a bookmark as a potential source of information while we continue to fine tune our implementation.

As with any methodology/framework/advice, I don't feel you can just 'do ITIL'. It has to be implemented by making it fit your organisation and meeting the challenges that that presents along the way. Overcoming these challenges gives you personal experience.

I would see the value in a forum of this nature to be sharing some of those personal experiences in helping others overcome their challenges. I see little advantage in "RTFM" and "it depends" (unless you want to set some precedent that only standard answers should be given unless people want to pay for the privilege of your advice). But as with any forum, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

No one here is getting paid to support your business so the 'unless you're willing to pay for it' complaint is a bit off.

The 'it depends' line is appropriate any time the person trying to offer an answer or advice doesn't know the environment that the asker is in... there are so many unknown varaibles. And that is nearly always.

Most of the problems around ITIL are at the planning level, not the execution, so when offered an 'it depends' answer this should indicate to you that you're not clarifying your objectives and constraints clearly, and that should come before you start taking action. The alarm bells should be ringing.

Further to that, by all means tell us about your experiences, I love hearing about the good, the bad and the ugly!

I certainly don't have any expectations that anyone here has to help me, or indirectly 'my' business. I'm just browsing for any information that might be useful. My point is more focused on my experience of asking questions of external trainers, who always seem reluctant to give you any specific advice, as if they expect my company to pay more for that. Whether there is any truth to that, or is just my cynical nature, is open to opinion.

And I completely agree that "it depends" is actually the correct answer where insufficient information has been provided (or thought has gone into it). But to the inexperienced I don't feel that it helps much, unless it's accompanied by guidance on the type of things they should have considered before posing such a question (which I can then appreciate potentially means repeating yourself a lot, but of course, on a forum such as this, you don't have to reply).

I look forward to sharing experiences, asking questions and providing my twopenneth in the future. Getting senior management to understand that a service catalogue isn't just something rolled out for special occasions is my current challenge

UJ,
Getting senior management to understand that a service catalogue isn't just something rolled out for special occasions is my current challenge

join the club! I have the same battle and get nowhere!

Just wanted to say that i wasnt implying that this forum should be busy or interesting (although it is hugely interesting to a geek like me!) i just meant that it depends on what you put into it as to what you get out of it...as with most things in life!

I always come back here if i am stuck...or to re-read some really useful posts that people have put up and i will carry on doing so no matter how quiet it is. But flame me and ill turn into a 12yr old school boy telephone (or computer) tough guy haha only messin.